A Boy Named Red: A True Crime Story

By Richard L Rashke

In March 1960, two students at Divine Word Seminary in East Troy discovered their 15-year-old classmate, Kenneth "Red" Rudnitski, hanging from the clothes hook in a bathroom stall. He was barefoot and dressed in his pajamas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Rabbit Books
• Release date: Mar 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869214058

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Copyright © 2023 by KR Associates

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Published by Red Rabbit Books

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Book Cover Design & Interior Layout by Scribeworks, LLC.

A Boy Named Red/ Richard Rashke—1st ed.

ISBN 979-8-8689-1678-6

E-ISBN 979-8-8692-1405-8

OTHER BOOKS BY RICHARD RASHKE

Nonfiction

The Killing of Karen Silkwood

Escape From Sobibor

Stormy Genius

Capitol Hill in Black and White

Runaway Father

Trust Me

Useful Enemies

The Whistleblower’s Dilemma

Children’s Letters to A Holocaust Survivor: Dear Esther

Plays

Dear Esther

Season To Season

For Red

To Guy and Bruce

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE NARRATIVE

PARADISE LOST

THE ANALYSIS

THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

THE MAKING OF ALPHONSE HORNE

THE MISFIT

ON THE LOOSE

HIDING ALPHONSE

ERASING ALPHONSE

DODGE BALL

THE PARTING OF THE VEIL

THE SHUFFLE AND THE SHELF

A VIEW FROM THE TOP

NEED-TO-KNOW

ABUSING THE POWER

THE BOY WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

THE BOY WHO SAW TOO MUCH

HOUNDING HARTE

THE GAMBLE

THE SYSTEMIC FLAW

FILLING HOLES

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

THE ONE-DAY INVESTIGATION

JAMES VOSS

DR. ROSS BAKER

DETECTIVE WERNER VOEGELI

SHERIFF JOSEPH DORR

CONCLUSIONS

WALWORTH COUNTY

THE CRIMINAL COVER UP

SUICIDE

SUICIDE—A SECOND LOOK

HOMICIDE?

JUSTICE FOR RED

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER END NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

Early in 2020, I received a phone call from an alumnus of Divine Word Seminary in East Troy, Wisconsin. The caller had entered the school in the fall of 1960, six months after the tragic death of Kenneth Red Rudnitski. Sixty years later, the caller was still troubled by the unanswered questions surrounding Red’s death.

The reason the caller sought me out was because I too was an East Troy alumnus. I had graduated from the seminary high school in 1953. Ordained a priest in 1963—three years after Red’s death—I was assigned to another high school seminary as a teacher and Assistant Prefect (dean of students) and served in that job for five years. I resigned from the priesthood in 1975 and became a writer.

The caller’s story intrigued me. The more he told me about Red’s death, the more the pieces didn’t seem to fit. When he suggested I write a book about this icy cold case, I agreed.

Some associates questioned my decision to re-open the Kenneth Red Rudnitski case. It’s 60 years old, they reminded me. Why exhume the boy’s ghost, they asked? No one cares, they said. Let the boy rest in peace, they argued. Cui bono they asked?

If what I knew of A Boy Named Red was even partly true, Red was not resting in peace and never would until the truth was unraveled—if it ever could be. My plan was simple: Give that fifteen-year-old boy a voice; redeem his name; if crimes have been committed against him, hold the criminals accountable; and offer Red a belated measure of justice.

***

No stranger to cold cases, I understood the unique problems and pitfalls I would have to face if I chose to poke around the edges of the story. My true-story World War II book Escape From Sobibor took place in 1943. My true story cold-case thriller, The Killing of Karen Silkwood, took place in the mid-1970s. No one had to tell me that I would be navigating through the dense fog of fuzzy memories and a mine field of contradictions and lies. Above all, I recognized that it might not be possible to find truth after sixty years of dust and mildew and that I might end up alone in a blind alley.

What ultimately convinced me to take the risk and to investigate Red’s tragic death was a precious asset. Many of Red’s classmates and fellow students, now in their mid to late seventies, were willing to guide me. With their help, I managed to find and interview or contact more than thirty of the 106 students attending the Seminary in 1960. They combed and sifted through old memories. They opened their hearts with courage. Some memories were mere shadows on the wall of time. Some events were either forgotten, only partially remembered, or buried so deeply that they could not be reached. Some have scars, relics of questions still unanswered. Others have stubborn wounds that refuse to heal. In the end, each offered recollections that helped me stitch the tragic death of Red Rudnitski into a coherent whole, albeit with gaps.

I feel compelled to point out that, with few exceptions, the former 1960 students at the East Troy seminary high school viewed their training as an enriching experience; they spoke about their time there critically but with fondness; and they felt indebted for the training and education they received.

In my search to exhume truth, I had invaluable assistance from a former Divine Word Seminary student Dick Hahner. His experience, contacts, investigation skills, and critiques of work-in-progress were indispensable. A Bronze-Star Vietnam War Veteran, Mr. Hahner spent thirty-three years as a U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigator. As I, Hahner believes that the death of a 15-year-old-boy mattered in 1960 and still matters today.

***

Puzzling the sixty-year-old death of a boy in a Catholic high school seminary is a sensitive topic that demands clear and careful treatment. Consequently, I have divided A Boy Named Red into three sections:

An objective journalistic rendering of the story based on interviews with attribution and documentation.

A contextual and historical analysis of the evidence, contradictions, and gaps in the journalistic rendering.

A series of conclusions based on the facts of the case, logic, and observations of professionals—doctors, lawyers, criminal and forensic investigators, and mental health professionals.

THE NARRATIVE

PARADISE LOST

Divine Word Seminary in East Troy, Wisconsin, thirty-five miles southwest of Milwaukee, was a paradise, especially for boys who grew up on asphalt metropolises of Milwaukee and Chicago. The brick school building sat on a bluff overlooking lower Lake Beulah which sparkled like a silver coin in the sun. Most of the houses on the lower lake were summer cottages, set back from the shore and shaded by oak, maple, and chestnut trees. Motor boating and water skiing took place mainly on the larger upper lake.

A Bud May Photo.

Upper and lower Lake Beulah were linked by a shallow channel dotted with tree stumps poking out of the water like gravestones. The water was so clear that if you stood still, you could count your toes. The Beulahs were widely known for their bluegill, sunfish, perch, and bass hiding in the cattails and lily pads along the shoreline.

The high school seminary sat on 170 acres—part farm, part lake-front, part wasteland. The missionary religious order that staffed the seminary purchased this slice of bucolic paradise for $27,000. The school opened in 1936, a home-away-from-home for 100 high school students wanting to become missionary priests who made a difference. The new seminary was deemed such an important contribution to the Church and to East Troy Township that Milwaukee Archbishop Samuel Stritch graced the first graduation with his presence.

Divine Word Seminary was hidden from the world about four miles from the unincorporated town of East Troy. As you left the county highway and drove onto St. Peter’s Road, leading to the seminary, you passed through the school farm with grazing black and white Holsteins and fields of alfalfa, hay, and corn. On the other side of the road a dense hedge shielded the seminary from its neighbors.

Behind the seminary, across a field and down a hill was tiny Army Lake. Compared to Beulah, which reached a depth of almost sixty feet, Army Lake was shallow and froze in November long before its neighbor. The students played hockey along Army Lake’s shoreline while the center was still open water. The bottom of the lake was littered with hockey pucks.

When the seminary Prefect thought Beulah was safe enough for skating and hockey, he would head for the boathouse with an ax. The whole student body would follow in anticipation. The Prefect would walk down the white steel pier iced in place and carefully step on to the ice. Then he would cut a hole with the ax and measure the thickness of the ice. If he thought it was safe for skating, he would give the thumbs up and the students would let out a cheer as loud as a stadium full of Green Bay Packer fans.

Frozen Lake Beulah. A Dick Hahner Photo.

The students would then tote their two hockey cages from Army Lake and set them on the ice near the boathouse. Then they would impatiently wait for the rest of the lake to turn into glass. Before snow covered it, they would skate for miles. Every now and then, gliding over the shallow channel, they would see a muskrat under the ice, swimming back home to the safety of its mound.

Directly behind the seminary was a meadow shaped like a bowl. If you sat quietly in its grasses, you could watch goldfinches flit, count Red-Shafted Flickers darting from tree to tree, and smile at the Killdeer running in nervous spurts up and down the dirt track that cut through the meadow, hoping you would go away. Half way down from the lip of the bowl was a rickety wood ski jump. Very few students dared to fly over the road and land, more or less safely, on the unpacked snow.

As you stood on the bluff outside the school building above Lake Beulah, there was a path to the right that followed the lake’s shoreline and led to the point. Looking down from the point above the path, you could see the entire lower Lake Beulah, part of the upper lake, and the swamp that hemmed half of the seminary property.

A Bud May Photo.

Dressed in delicate shades of brown that came alive when the wind rippled its grasses, the swamp had an aura of primitive beauty. It was filled with muskrat mounds and beaten trails that the furry rats shared with raccoons and mink. Red-wing black birds squawked from reeds. If you were quiet, you could hear a pheasant call or see a great blue heron fishing on one leg in the fresh water at the edge of the swamp. In the middle of the wasteland was an island covered with trees, a relic of the woods of yesteryear. If you carefully picked your way bog-to-bog, you could walk there. And, when you stood on top of the island hill, you felt like you were the first person to have ever set foot on it.

On March 8, 1960, the Divine Word paradise turned into a nightmare. But, to give some context, we will begin in early February.

Early February 1960

Thirteen-year-old Tim Fitzgerald was enlarging and printing photos in the seminary darkroom. He was a freshman and described himself as a vulnerable pretty boy, shy and somewhat withdrawn. After Tim’s father abandoned the family, Tim’s mother was unable to support her six children and sought help from the parish priest. According to Mr. Fitzgerald, the priest advised Anne Veronica to give her son to Chicago’s Angel Guardian Orphanage where he would be safe and receive a good education. As a ward of the state of Illinois in a Wisconsin boarding school with students who had parents and a family, Tim felt different. While the other students went home during vacations, he went back to Angel Guardian and the German nuns who reared him.

For Tim, photography was more than just a hobby. The darkroom was a place where, as Mr. Fitzgerald put it, he came alive. Before long, he was better than good with a lens, developing pans, and an enlarger. As the 1960 seminary yearbook Spokesman described him:

Tim is a regular shutter bug and is often seen with a camera cocked and ready for a shot. He rarely misses a chance to show his stuff with a camera at any sporting event or play production. ‘Fitzy’ almost ranks with professionals.

The seminary basement darkroom was almost as professional as the photographer Tim Fitzgerald. The small room, six-feet by six-feet, was fully equipped with two enlargers, a sink with running water, two developing pans, a red developing light, and a shelf with a row of photo chemicals, each neatly labeled. A string stretched across the work area where newly developed photographs could hang and dry. A thick, light-proof curtain separated the work area from the rest of the room which didn’t have a door opening into the basement corridor. To enter and leave, student photographers like Tim had to pass through the janitorial/paint room. That space was the domain